Library of Useful Knowledge
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Publisher :
Page : 166 pages
File Size : 31,56 MB
Release : 1829
Category : Physics
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Author :
Publisher :
Page : 166 pages
File Size : 31,56 MB
Release : 1829
Category : Physics
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Author : Richard S. Peale
Publisher :
Page : 846 pages
File Size : 50,85 MB
Release : 1886
Category : Encyclopedias and dictionaries
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Page : 358 pages
File Size : 43,94 MB
Release : 1831
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Author : Jonathan Lyons
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 48,11 MB
Release : 2014-06-10
Category : History
ISBN : 1608195724
A spellbinding, rich history of the American Enlightenment-think 1776 meets The Metaphysical Club.
Author : Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (Great Britain)
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Page : 480 pages
File Size : 42,74 MB
Release : 1829
Category : Science
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Page : 442 pages
File Size : 18,96 MB
Release : 1811
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Author : Abraham Flexner
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 104 pages
File Size : 27,35 MB
Release : 2017-02-21
Category : Reference
ISBN : 0691174768
A short, provocative book about why "useless" science often leads to humanity's greatest technological breakthroughs A forty-year tightening of funding for scientific research has meant that resources are increasingly directed toward applied or practical outcomes, with the intent of creating products of immediate value. In such a scenario, it makes sense to focus on the most identifiable and urgent problems, right? Actually, it doesn't. In his classic essay "The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge," Abraham Flexner, the founding director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the man who helped bring Albert Einstein to the United States, describes a great paradox of scientific research. The search for answers to deep questions, motivated solely by curiosity and without concern for applications, often leads not only to the greatest scientific discoveries but also to the most revolutionary technological breakthroughs. In short, no quantum mechanics, no computer chips. This brief book includes Flexner's timeless 1939 essay alongside a new companion essay by Robbert Dijkgraaf, the Institute's current director, in which he shows that Flexner's defense of the value of "the unobstructed pursuit of useless knowledge" may be even more relevant today than it was in the early twentieth century. Dijkgraaf describes how basic research has led to major transformations in the past century and explains why it is an essential precondition of innovation and the first step in social and cultural change. He makes the case that society can achieve deeper understanding and practical progress today and tomorrow only by truly valuing and substantially funding the curiosity-driven "pursuit of useless knowledge" in both the sciences and the humanities.
Author : Lewis Dartnell
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 18,64 MB
Release : 2015-03-10
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0143127047
How would you go about rebuilding a technological society from scratch? If our technological society collapsed tomorrow what would be the one book you would want to press into the hands of the postapocalyptic survivors? What crucial knowledge would they need to survive in the immediate aftermath and to rebuild civilization as quickly as possible? Human knowledge is collective, distributed across the population. It has built on itself for centuries, becoming vast and increasingly specialized. Most of us are ignorant about the fundamental principles of the civilization that supports us, happily utilizing the latest—or even the most basic—technology without having the slightest idea of why it works or how it came to be. If you had to go back to absolute basics, like some sort of postcataclysmic Robinson Crusoe, would you know how to re-create an internal combustion engine, put together a microscope, get metals out of rock, or even how to produce food for yourself? Lewis Dartnell proposes that the key to preserving civilization in an apocalyptic scenario is to provide a quickstart guide, adapted to cataclysmic circumstances. The Knowledge describes many of the modern technologies we employ, but first it explains the fundamentals upon which they are built. Every piece of technology rests on an enormous support network of other technologies, all interlinked and mutually dependent. You can’t hope to build a radio, for example, without understanding how to acquire the raw materials it requires, as well as generate the electricity needed to run it. But Dartnell doesn’t just provide specific information for starting over; he also reveals the greatest invention of them all—the phenomenal knowledge-generating machine that is the scientific method itself. The Knowledge is a brilliantly original guide to the fundamentals of science and how it built our modern world.
Author : William Shakespeare
Publisher :
Page : 706 pages
File Size : 29,88 MB
Release : 1839
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Author : Alan Rauch
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 19,50 MB
Release : 2001-07-17
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780822326687
DIVA statement on how “knowledge” is socialized and assimilated by a culture, investigating popular and canonical fiction, early encyclopedias, and other popular efforts at mass education and knowledge dissemination./div